Ligature
by Saucery
Summary: Derek and Laura, after the fire. WARNING: INCEST.


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**LIGATURE**

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It's not just that they're the only ones who're left. It's not just that. That would make it - what they do -

They don't do anything, really. Derek's done enough things that are wrong. That are stupid. He's loved the wrong person, before. In the wrong way. He's not about to -

They don't do anything. It's just that Laura smells of _home_, and Derek must smell like home to her, too. That's why Laura curls around him, at night, in the burnt-out husk of their house, still and stifling with the rain-damp stench of old smoke and boiled flesh. It makes Laura's skin ripple with fur and her claws curve against Derek's neck, and she scent-marks him like he's going to disappear, like he's the last thing there is in this world, and she has to hide him, keep him safe. Surround him in her body and her scent, drown him in it. Keep him safe, safe, _safe_.

Derek takes off his clothes before he goes to sleep. She needs them to be naked, for her to mark him. She needs -

She's his Alpha, so she's within her rights to -

Nothing. It's just marking. They don't do anything.

Sometimes, Derek touches her back. Running human hands over her, calming her, taking care not to shift, not to escalate things, not to grow fangs or claws. It's the least he can do for her. (It's the most.)

Neither of them visit Uncle Peter, not for the first few months.

Neither of them, if asked, can probably explain _why_.

Maybe they just don't want to see Peter trapped in the cage of himself, scarred and unable to move. Unable to speak. ("Locked-in syndrome," the doctors say.) They don't want to see the man who'd brought them up in the absence of their parents, who'd taught them chess, who'd attended their lacrosse games and cheered in an embarrassingly loud voice, who'd pretended to believe their obviously false alibis when they wanted to stay out and had given them frighteningly detailed fashion advice - they don't want to see him as he is, little more than a husk, a breathing shell.

They don't visit Peter.

They just go about their lives, their unnecessary, shitty day-jobs, gutted and numb. Numb and _weak_, as if bleeding from internal wounds. Derek swears he can taste the blood in his mouth, bubbling up within him and choking him, strangling his words. He isn't sure if it's his own blood, or his pack's.

Or Kate's. Who he has dreams about killing, every other night - dreams he wakes up from, hard and whimpering, claws out and tearing into the mattress, sobbing around the urge to vomit, because he's often fucking her, in those dreams, fucking her _and_killing her, and he's -

No. _No_ -

Laura's there, of course, when it happens. She's right there. But she doesn't leave. And Derek shouldn't feel grateful for that - he doesn't _deserve_ to feel grateful for that - but he does, because he's not alone, because she isn't leaving him alone with the murderer he wants to be. The murderer he knows he _is_. He killed them all. Mary. Matthew. Kenneth. Grace. Brian. Chloe. Sam. He killed them more than _Kate_ did, so it isn't Kate who should die for it…

Laura just wraps herself around him, tighter, like it isn't weird that he's still hard, that her thigh's still brushing him, that her mouth's still moving against his ear as she tells him it'll be all right.

They don't do anything.

Inevitably, though, that changes.

It turns out that Laura _does_ go to see Uncle Peter, without Derek, on the same day that she's arranged for repairmen to come to the house. He only finds out about it because she's all sharp corners when she returns, brittle and strange, and smells of sickness and chemicals, like the hospital does. And, beneath all of that, she smells of Peter.

She doesn't answer when Derek demands to know what happened. How Peter _is_. Instead, she ends up driving out the electrician and the plumber before they can even get started.

"Don't touch anything," she snarls, which doesn't make any sense; she's the one who called them. "Get out."

They escape. Startled and a little frightened, and more than slightly puzzled by _why_ they're frightened, because to human eyes, Laura is just another pretty young thing, diminutive and slight, with long brown hair and big brown eyes. Eyes that seem to glow red, every now and then, but surely that's just a trick of the light.

"Derek," she says, and that's all she has to say.

He's in her arms before she has to say it again.

In her arms, and in their bed.

Kenneth's bed. The only bed that remains.

Except that it doesn't smell like Ken, anymore.

It smiles like death. Dull-brown and ash-grey, dusty and bitter, warmed only by the scent of Laura's skin.

She transforms almost immediately, but hovers between forms, half-wolf, half-woman. She looks ready to kill something. Ready to kill _him_. Derek wishes she would.

"You can't stay here, Derek," she says, and her words are more like growls. She presses down on his shoulders when he protests, when he asks her _why_.

"But - "

"You can't," she whispers, lost and wrathful and ragged. "You _can't_. Or you'll become a part of this place, become a part of - "

"I _am_ a part of this place." It's a part of _him_ -

"You. Can't."

And then, Laura shows him why.

Shows him with her mouth, molten-hot and terrifying - terrifying in its gentleness, despite its fangs.

Shows him with her hands. Shows him how hard he can get when she strokes him with them, how desperately he can _buck_ when she climbs atop him and takes him inside her.

And he knows why she's doing this. She's doing it so he _has_ to leave, so that he can't stay here, not without twisting everything between them into _this_, always.

It's nothing like with Ka -

It's _everything_ like -

Wet, so wet, so sweet, and _barbed_, and not just because of the claws that scrape his hips. It's the wire in the blood that makes it hurt, that makes it ache and bruise, the bruise of it spreading beneath his skin like a stain, the darkest of inks, like he's been hit all over, again and again, and left for dead - or brought to life, agonizing life, nerves sparking with fresh pain. He isn't sure which is worse, anymore. Being one of the living, or one of the dead. He isn't sure if it's worse that he loves his sister more, for doing this, or that he loves her less.

It's done.

He doesn't remember coming. Won't remember anything, later, but the soft give of her fully-human mouth as she kissed him.

A parting kiss.

For in the morning, she's gone.

The place seems huge, without her. Empty. All blackened rafters and beams cracked like ribs, the decaying chest of this house torn open and exposed to the pale, indifferent scrutiny of dawn.

Laura was right.

Of course she was.

It's ridiculous, to stay here. To live on in a mausoleum. To make oneself a corpse.

Derek may want to die, but even he knows how selfish that is, and that none of those who passed would want him to join them. Not yet.

So he packs a duffel bag full of his things, and takes out the folded leaflet he'd kept in it, a year ago, a shiny-if-crumpled brochure listing programs at NYU. He picks one. Makes a few calls. Transfers funds. And contacts the Hales' usual supplier of fake licenses and IDs, because not being able to have his photo taken is one hell of an inconvenience, traveling interstate.

He drops in to see Peter, before he goes.

He doesn't say anything.

What's the point, when Peter can't hear him? When those eyes, faded as river-stones, don't even blink when Derek waves his hand?

So Derek just talks to the nurse - a redheaded Jennifer - and gives her his number and his new address. Tells her to call him, if anything happens. She looks appropriately sympathetic, in a professional, impersonal sort of way.

And then, Derek's off to New York, on a plane filled with the smells of sneakers and recycled oxygen and cheap perfume.

He doesn't know where Laura's gone. He can guess, but he doesn't _know_. That's why she left, like she did.

Like he needed her to.

Like he never wanted her to.

_Needs and wants, Derek_, Chloe had mock-scolded him, once, dimpled and silly, teasing Derek about failing some test because he'd been out celebrating a victory with his team. _Needs and wants._

Derek knows the difference between them, now.

He knows, because his Alpha taught him.

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**fin.**


End file.
